1. Field of Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for searching distributed networks using a plurality of search devices.
2. Description of Related Art
With increased use of the Internet and other similar distributed networks, the ability to search these networks to locate information and files is becoming increasingly important. Currently, with the Internet, for example, the network is searched with the aid of search engines. The search engines allow a user to enter a search query, comprised of search terms, and the search engine searches the various devices connected to the network for the occurrence of these search terms in documents and files located on the devices.
Each search engine, however, only covers a small portion of the distributed network. Thus, in order to be assured that the user has located all the sources of the search terms, available by any search engine, within the distributed network, the search query must be repeatedly entered into a number of different search engines to locate all devices having information or files containing the search terms. Thus, there is a need for new technology to allow a user to search all of the available portions of a distributed network without having to repeatedly reenter their search query.
The present invention is directed to a method and apparatus for searching distributed networks using a plurality of search devices. The apparatus includes a meta-search engine device that receives a search query from a user device. The meta-search engine device submits the search query to a plurality of search engine devices and compiles the results from each of the search engine devices into a merged list. The merged list is then sorted and ranked according to predetermined criteria and displayed to the user via the user device.
The ranking of the list may be based on, for example, the presence of the search terms, or terms related to the search terms, in a summary and/or title of the retrieved sources, rankings obtained from the various search engine devices, weighting factors based on the particular search engine devices from which the search results are retrieved, the number of repetitions, if any, of retrieved sources, and the like.
Thus, with the present invention, a user is able to search a distributed network with a plurality of search devices and thus is more assured that all locations containing information or files related to his/her search query have been found. Furthermore, the user is provided with a compiled listing with a single ranking scheme to thereby determine which of the many retrieved search locations are the most relevant to the search query. Additionally, the single ranked list returned to the user is ranked primarily by the occurrence of search terms, or terms related to the search terms, in the title and summary of the sources and thus is more representative of the relative importance of the sources than prior art meta or single rank search devices.